NationBuilder recently had the awesome opportunity to collaborate with General Assembly and their Web Development Immersive program. This was the first WDI cohort held in GA's downtown Los Angeles campus so, needless to say, it was pretty cool to be apart of their expansion into our HQ's neighborhood.
If you're not familiar with General Assembly, they're an organization that provides thinkers and doers with courses designed to enhance skill sets "from web development and user experience design, to business fundamentals, to data science, to product management and digital marketing". In other words, pretty useful stuff in today's world.
A key part of this collaboration was introducing students learning full-stack web development to NationBuilder's theming framework, giving them a front-end environment to explore. Constructing a theme in NationBuilder also allowed them the opportunity to couple their new development arsenal with visual design. The red pen in determining solid work: the Architect certification guideline.
There are some other interesting tidbits worth noting -
So many different foundations
General Assembly students are a diverse bunch. They hail from a multitude of backgrounds and enter the program with just as many different goals. Some want a career change, others are there to augment their craft, and some are simply seeking a unique challenge. The one shared characteristic noticed, however, is that everyone was hungry for knowledge. And food. Seriously. GA knows how to throw a mean spread...
Those who want to become entrepreneurs versus work for a company is pretty evenly split
Even more surprising, almost all were quite certain of their goal. No indication of wavering undergrad studies here. I spoke with one student who wanted to build iOS apps for an enterprise-sized company. Another was a graphic designer learning javascript while starting her own creative agency. Countless others had startup ideas they wanted to implement by becoming a developer instead of hunting for one. Everyone came to the table with a vision for themselves.
Equal amounts of creativity and execution
Probably one of the most inspiring things I noticed was how elated students were to share their projects - basically an equivalent of a thesis that is the culmination of being a sponge for 12 weeks. Instead of having to build around an assigned topic, they were tasked with both finding a problem and creating a solution for it. Leaving the subject at the student's discretion allowed for immense creativity in defining a void and filling it with technology. That approach really seemed to create a "bingo!" moment for most everyone in the program. Not just because of the excitement of a acquiring new skill set, but the fact they can actually implement an idea instead of being limited to the conversation around it.
It's exciting to see what the students graduates will end up creating over time. I believe equipping more people with these kinds of tools allows us, as a community, to becomes better designers and developers. Even though everyone is at different stages of their education and experience, a wider contribution of solutions gets all of us thinking bigger.
